


renaissance is the way to go

by theviolonist



Category: The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-29
Updated: 2014-09-29
Packaged: 2018-02-19 05:52:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2377181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theviolonist/pseuds/theviolonist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Guilt is no use for someone who plans to live as long as she does.</p>
            </blockquote>





	renaissance is the way to go

'Lie' becomes the central verb. The second thing Katherine does, after rearing before its harsh unforgivableness, is strip it of its guilt. Guilt is no use for someone who plans to live as long as she does.

The conjugation goes: I lie, you lie, she lies -- it winds around Katherine's wrist like bracelets and after a while they etch into the skin, wearing it down through force of habit, through time and mornings spent in diners giving names that aren't hers, Tatiana, Elena, Lacey. The waitresses give her back vacant smiles, wondering why she even bothers to give her name at all. After a while Katherine stops, but the habit stays; she makes up the stories in her head in the split-second interval before the puncturing heel of her too-expensive shoe crosses over the threshold, stamps down its mark. Tatiana, who comes from a small, dirt-poor country in the Balkans, childish and vindictive. Likes her coffee black. Dead kid. 

The thing is —and that, in all its irony, is actually something Katherine learned from Elijah, who is probably the one of Katherine's lovers who understands the most about transformation— that the ability to tear through skin like it's wrapping paper doesn't come with self-effacing memory. Tabula rasa isn't an option; what's needed is to get creative, craft new women from the microscopic details of the past, mold the flesh of corpses back into human form. Phoenix rising out of the ashes, Elijah had said, but Katherine has pragmatism stamped into her bones from a family with too many mouths to feed and not enough food to feed them, the dregs of old money leaving behind only the stiffness of respectability, hushed scandals and impeccable table manners. Her grandmother wore jewels cheapened by time, impossible to sell, while she sewed her hideous doilies with calm fury.

The things of the past: Katerina's broad accent, her gluttonous love for beetroots, pastries, anything with grease or sugar in it, in the absence of flesh; and a torturous, deceiving kind of innocence. Katherine slips the latter back on like old clothes - not nearly as comfortable as the new ones, she has to say - and the scenario plays out: Lacey sits at the bar, Lacey flutters her eyelashes and orders a martini, Lacey tortures the bartender until he tells her he remembers now -- blood staining the tips of her fingers, thick in the crevices around her nails like badly-applied nail polish -- there were two men here last week, a tall one dressed like James Bond and a small one, who looked—

"Vicious," says Katherine, and snaps his neck. 

That's another thing. A magician never reveals his tricks, and Katherine Pierce would die before she'd tell you that Katerina knew death as well as her, better even, but it's the truth. It used to be everywhere, matter-of-fact, nothing surprising or cruel about it: the gooseflesh beneath her fingers when she went for the chicken's neck, beak opening, throat pulsing moistly for a millisecond —you had to do it right. Mikaela used to say, do not make them suffer more than is needed. There was no kindness in it; she was afraid of retribution, believed, like everyone, that nothing was lost, that more than the necessary amount of any emotion, the excess in any movement would curl in the vacant space and slash back, whip-like, just. There were thieves whose fingers were cut on the marketplace, the ashes of burnt witches, collected to make black magic medicine, and the unremarkable deaths of neighbors, small children, old folk. The first human drained rights the balance for the death of Katerina's child; after that the rest is easy. 

Of course there is the matter of wardrobe. Katherine is decked out in modern garb, liver-piercing heels, sleek leather, buttery curls, from head to toes a spiderweb in humanoid disguise. Elijah, who has had the bad taste to be in love with her all this time, for all he knows better, has to blink when he sees her again, then laugh —and because he fancies himself a martyr, fall in love with her all over again. But the effect is achieved: there is Katerina, her suede finally breathing, liberated from underneath the heavy folds of the old dresses; her confused mannerisms and the too-charming curl of her smile. In Elena the ribcage, wrapped in soft cardigans and teenage tops, caves a little deeper, folds onto itself, curling around its wealth of secrets and sins; Tatiana with her heavy bangles retains something of the animal, and the sharp-edged Katherine lives by one cardinal rule only, survival. 

Those girls are uneasy and careless, and Katerina has no affection for them from the depth of her grave; but there is comfort and there is necessity, and when it comes down to it it is the latter Katerina knows like the back of her hand, from being pushed into a dank-smelling carriage and sent away to be an English whore four centuries ago. She bears them. Katherine walks into town and people can't tear their eyes off her, just like they couldn't tear their eyes off of mousy, brown Katerina back in the day, gliding across the room to be presented to the master of the house. Klaus, he had introduced himself, looking her right in the eye.

(Which is a red herring, Katherine knows that now: just because people are looking you in the eye doesn't mean they're really looking at you. The only difference is, now she knows how to take advantage of it.)

Her grandmother, before she closed her doors to her good-for-nothing grand-daughter once and for all when Katerina grew big with her bastard child, had told her during a break in her sewing that she had once harbored a couple of fugitives, political dissidents —Anna and Pietr, she'd said, rolling the r hard, with her teeth— for a whole year. The police knew, she said, and Katerina had asked, the picture of wide-eyed innocence, well, why aren't you in prison now? You have to tell them what they see, had said the old woman, her eyes spitting blue sparks in the damp darkness. People never trust themselves, that's why they go to magic shows: tell them what they see, and they'll believe you.

Maybe she would thank her today, Katherine thinks, if there was any love left in her heart, and if her grandmother's grave hadn't been ransacked, the big stone struck open in two by the sharp edge of a shovel. 

She holds out her hand; the red nails glimmer. Her smirk catches the sun, a work of art. The words roll out of her mouth, rote by now, smoothed like riverstones by the conjoined forces of habit and will: "Katherine Pierce. Enchantée."


End file.
